Mastering Market Entry: Data-Driven Strategies for US Expansion and Beyond

US Market Entry Basics

We’re always asked about launching in the US and how to approach that and how to scale. You’ve built a solid base in the UK. You want to go to the US and break America. What’s the game plan?

The best way to launch in the US really, is to take what is working in your home base and see whether that works over there first, with minimal cost to you as a business. It’s literally as simple as starting another campaign on Meta, let’s say, and targeting the US. Obviously theres operational considerations etc. as well. But that’s really how you can first test the waters of launching the US is what’s working for us here going to work over there. That’s the first place to start.

Yeah, and I suppose the key considerations you have to make are like, How different is my delivery time in the US? How does my returns policy differ?

These things have a really big impact on conversion rates so if it doesn’t work when you first launch there, you need to get the feedback from customers and really understand why they’re not buying.

But I think it’s just like if you launch in the US, you’ve got a really considered delivery time returns policy because they can have a huge impact on conversion rate, which will make you think, oh, It doesn’t work for me in the US because my conversion rate is really low. But actually people still have the intent to buy. But ultimately because you don’t offer free returns, for example, or it takes two weeks to get delivered because of the operation side of things.

These things will have a massive impact because in the US people expect it tomorrow because that is groomed by Amazon.

Jeff has groomed them. 

Yeah. So I think that that’s the key thing as well that you launch, that you can test it at a low scale and understand how to test the water in the market. But if you’re really going to try and make it work, I think the operations logistics is where you really need to turn your mind to in order to really give it a fair shot.

Scaling and Localising in the US

In terms of the first entry point of the US though, I think there’s two schools of thought. You can go really hyper-granular with both your targeting, breaking out the U.S. into different areas. You make assumptions and you can go that route, and you also localise your website, adapt to different currencies—and there’s a real cost to doing that. Ultimately, when youre launching into a new territory for most brands it’s really a test of “Can this work for us?” That’s the mindset for most brands.

Some brands definitely approach it through the lens of “We’re going to crack this and whatever it takes” and so there’s more investment required there. And so for them it might make more business sense to localise currency, website copy, offers, and other elements to fit the U.S. market.

But the way I’d really approach it for most brands is to replicate what’s working in the UK and just advertise in the U.S. Ensure you have a quick lead time and delivery time for U.S. customers and address any U.S.-specific objections or questions in your FAQs. That’s a good place to start with an MVP: can it work? what do we need to do and tweak to make this work for us and just get some data through you can work on. 

How can you quickly just build trust and make sure that it does feel like a brand that’s established in the US? You don’t want people to feel like its a bit of con and that’s ultimately what will make a lot of people drift away from you and also maybe lose the will to purchase about halfway through the funnel like “ah the product looks great” get a bit further through and it’s like “oh right  the returns policy is terrible,” or “Delivery times really long, I can’t be assed I’ll get it somewhere else.”

Yeah, I think people in the US really hate paying for delivery most of the time. Amazon’s culture has driven free delivery into everybody, so that’s one thing to consider. What’s the impact actually on your conversion rate and the margin you make by charging or not charging for delivery? These are small nuances that you can and should deploy.

Ultimately, the key takeaway is to keep it simple. We tend to recommend launching broad, depending on the budget or maybe using a lookalike strategy on Meta or focusing on specific products on Google, but avoid overcomplicating things. Focus on simplifying the user experience on your site, as that’s what will move the needle in the early stages.

Once you start to gain traction and make a few tweaks around localisation—maybe localising some creative as well—that’s when you can start to invest, build out a U.S.-focused site, and grow a customer base there.

Mastering Market Entry: Data-Driven Strategies

So we always have conversations with brands when they launch in the U.S.: do we go local and target specific states, or do we go broad? There are always competing schools of thought on this. It’d be great to get your thoughts now.

Yeah. For most brands, there’s a strong argument for being more specific with your entry into the U.S. You can hyper-localise and go through this big process, state by state. However, I’d really strongly argue that for most brands, that approach just does not represent value from a business perspective.

You’re much better off getting data back on what’s working and replicating what’s working in the UK over in the U.S. Copy and paste as best you can, with minimal cost, to see whether what you have in place is going to work there. If not, you can tweak it to make it work. That’s a much better strategy, in my opinion, than trying to build a best-guess strategy for a very specific entry into the U.S., whether that’s focusing on a specific state or area. Finding out that you’re wrong can lead to huge costs and lost opportunities for most brands. I really advise starting broader and simpler and letting the data lead you.

I don’t think a lot of brands really realise what they have at their disposal. Tools like Meta, Google, and TikTok are essentially machine learning algorithms that tell you who’s interested in your product. Meta, in particular, and TikTok are very much product discovery tools; you’re showing things to people, and they learn who’s interested in your product.

Narrowing down to just California because it’s a big market is often misguided. People usually think, “I’m going to launch in New York and California!” and that’s it. They just see how it goes because, yes, they are big markets. But you might miss out on the opportunity to get lower-cost conversions elsewhere in the country, where probably fewer people are advertising as well.

You have this chance to learn from Meta, which is showing your product to a diverse audience and figuring out who converts, regardless of which state they’re in. You might find you’re getting great traction in the Midwest—unexpected insights can arise.

It’s the same when you’re launching a new ad. You might go in thinking, “This idea is going to crush,” and then get humbled when you actually launch it. So you’re better off testing a bunch of different things simultaneously and letting the data guide you toward where you’re getting results, rather than going one by one.

Yeah, and then you can hone in on what you’ve learned. Yeah, totally.